Somewhat inspired by kerr, I picked up my first SNES games in more than 20 years this weekend - good condition boxed copied of Cool Spot and Stunt Race FX. Both well received at the time, although I suspect Stunt Rce FX has not aged well.

Coincidentally, they also had an unboxed copy of The Duel: Test Drive II. I took kerr’s recommendation and didn’t buy it...

Logistically if I was to continue this it probably would be megadrive games. I have more than 150 SNES games but not enough to hit 300, I probably have 225 odd megadrive games so pull out the too hard to talk about ones and that's doable. I actually started with reviewing sega stuff on YouTube, look my name up and you'll find them, not sure what got me on to reviewing SNES stuff maybe it was when sega threatend to sue me and tried to have my YouTube channel shut down over Sonic 4.

I got early unreleased footage of sonic 4 and I put up a video essentially reviewing the footage saying how excited I was and what they needed to do more and less of. It was a very optimistic Sega positive video but they said it was breaking the law as it used there footage, I argued as I was reviewing it that it was fair use, unfortunately YouTube sided with sega my account received warnings I got threats of legal action etc Makes for a good story now wasn't quiet so thrilling back then.

Pretty much everyone will have played a movie license at one point in time, heck I have played a couple of movie tie ins during these reviews but what I don't think I have played yet for this series is one game which is based on an entire trilogy of movies. The majority of movie tie ins usually release either to coincide with a films cinema or home release, but occasionally you will get a game made for a film that came out ages ago, here we have a game made which is a video game interpretation of three films Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade the first of which was released 13 year before this game and the last of which was released 5 years before this game. Nowadays this kind of thing doesn't seem as strange as it did back then, after all nowadays we get all kinds of trilogy games usually made in lego but back then this really was an original proposition.

So how did it come about? Well apparently it came from the success of Super StarWars and Super Empire Strikes Back made by Sculptured Software that led to Lucas Arts believing that maybe they should take the Indiana Jones films and do the same thing. Apparently the game was made using the same engine as the above games (and Super Return of the Jedi) but it wasn't made by Sculptured Software it was made by Factor 5 an independent software and video game developer which was co-founded by five former Rainbow Arts employees in 1987 in Cologne, Germany. Factor 5 only actually made 3 games on the SNES Super Turrican, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures and Super Turrican 2. With the fact that I will only review games I own and the Turrican games are pretty darn expensive this is really my only chance to talk about them. I adore Factor 5 they are probably best known by most people for being the developers of the Star Wars Rogue Squadron series the 2nd of which Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader was the first ever game I grabbed for the Nintendo Gamecube, it was in fact what made me get a Cube about a week after the machine was released. Still with the first Turrican under there belt and the engine from the Super StarWars games in there hand what could go wrong?

I remember there being quiet a buzz about this game before it released I would have been around 14 so in one of my later years of secondary school, which was sort of one of the best times for me games wise. You see I hung around with a small bunch of lads and all of us gamed, some of us had Super Nintendo's and some had MegaDrives I was one of the only ones to have both. We would go to each others houses and play games, we would occasionally manage to beg one of our parents to have all of us around to play winner stays on street fighter 2 tournaments we would play each others games, trade games, pretty much all the games related stuff you can think of. One thing we also did was to show each other our gaming magazines and discuss up and coming games. Everyone was excited about this Indy game both the SNES and Megadrive gamers, you see originally this game was supposed to be coming to the MegaDrive in fact it was apparently finished and ready to be released some time between the summer and autumn of 1995, heck it even got reviewed but it never came out. This cut off half of the groups interest in this game the other half seemed to get wrapped up in excitement about the playstation but what about me? In all honesty I have no idea I just guess with everyone stopping talking about it I just forgot all about it. So when was my attention brought back to it? Well that would be years later when walking round a local carboot. It was one that used to be held every Thursday evening at 5pm. I frequently visited it and there were a lot of regular sellers who I had forged quiet friendly relationships with and one Thursday this cart was sitting on one of there tables with a fair bit of dirt on it and a sticker on it saying £3. Suddenly everything came back to me and I grabbed it and paid quickly. How could I have forgotten this game and ignored it up until this point? I guess I had gotten excited about the upcoming next generation of machines and I had forgotten all about my Love of Indiana Jones, how could I forget that after the approximately 300 times I had watched The Temple of Doom, after I had waited for The Last Crusade to come out and with the fact that I had an old EX-rental copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark sitting on my shelf given pride of place as something I wanted to draw peoples attention? What did I do after I paid for it? Well basically I walked back to my house whistling the Indiana Jones theme and then instantly played it.

OK so what do you do in the game? Well most of the time its an action platformer you play as Indy and you go through most of the main events in all three movies in order. This starts with twelve stages based on Raiders of the Lost Ark, including the iconic bit with the giant giant boulder, then you have eight stages based on Temple of Doom, and then you get eight levels based on The Last Crusade. So what can Indy do well he can run and jump around, do a tactical roll, punch and once you pick it up you can swing his whip and the same goes with Indy's gun find it and you can use it, there are also grenades to find which are like powerful screen clearing attacks. The whip though its so satisfying to use, the noise it makes the cracking animation and yes there are castlevania style bits where you can use the whip to swing over gaps or to reach previously unreachable extra lives and other pick ups. What about when its not an action platformer? Well basically you have levels that total change the game style completely for a start instead of being 2D they are 3D and they use the SNES's much loved Mode 7. You have for example a stage where you control a rubber boat sliding through the snow, a mine cart chase and a biplane riding level all of which are based on events in the movies. These levels have there own objectives and well they are really good for just braking things up a little bit, if there is anything I can say about them it is that they are all pretty awesome and the game probably could have done with a few more of them.

OK I have already said that the game is based on the films and that the levels reflect the films but there are also lots of cut scenes made up of digitized pictures from the films and dialogue in text form. Add to that the fact that the game contains great 16bit versions of some of the music from the movies which if your a fan you will probably recognize but its worth noting that almost all of the tracks are taken from the first movie, with only a tiny amount of them being taken from the second and not a single tune taken from the third film. There are also a few little pieces of digitized speech, not much but it is cool, I really love when the level starts with Indy saying ''lets go''. The presentation in the game is just top tear and it makes the game feel like a love letter to the movies which is brilliant when most licenses don't get this right and instead end up feeling like crummy cash grabs with no heart. Some people have complained that this game is hard but in all honesty I find it pleasantly challenging. I realize that I haven't mentioned the graphics at all, well there OK, if they were early in the SNES's life I would say there good but for late end of lifespan SNES graphics there not that wonderful. Still you know what I say gameplay is king.

OK so to cut to the chase I had a lot of expectations when it came to this game and in honesty I think it lived up to all of them. I would give this game a very positive 8 out of 10 sure its not perfect but its a darn good game particularly if you like either the Indiana Jones films, action platformers like this or both. So if you wanted to buy a cart of this well the cheapest I have seen it for now days is £25 with it often going for a lot more. If its worth this kind of cash or not well that's up to you and how much you are willing to spend on Super Nintendo games. It might be worth looking for a copy of Super StarWars first if you don't have that as its a very similar game and you can try that to test the waters and see if your likely to like this or not. You can get it for not too much cash on the Wii virtual console but if you haven't heard then that's closing down soon so if you want to get it that way then you'll have to try and be quick about it.

kerr9000 wrote:Stunt race feels a lot slower than it did especially if it's pal , but I think once you adjust to it the game still has a lot of charm, I hope you enjoy it.

I found the 'in car' view seemed a bit faster - less to draw I guess.The only problem seemed to be that the timer isn't calibrated the same as using the external view, and so lap times are considerably faster (using the in-car view).I wasn't sure if it was because my driving was more optimal, but I did a few 'straight line tests' to a fixed point from the starting line, and you could definitely get there quicker 'in-car'.

I was going to work on another review this afternoon but I also review Horror films and realised I hadnt done one of those in ages so did that instead, mostly because I didn't know what game I was going to do next.

My 100th review for this project was Pop'n Twinbee Rainbow Bell Adventure and I mentioned in that review that I should probably review Pop'n Twinbee before Rainbow Bell but that I couldn't and wouldn't be doing that as I didn't own it. (I only review things I have the actual cartridge for) Well as I am drawing to the end of my project I have started being a little more picky about what I review, I have looked at a few things I have really wanted to review but didn't own and looked at getting them. So I grabbed this game purely to do this review.

So Pop'n Twinbee is a top-view shoot-'em-up game originally released in march 1993 by Konami for the Super Famicom in Japan. It was never released in the American market but it did make its way to the Pal regions during November of 1993. If I was to try and explain this game any more I would call it a vertical moving cute em up shoot em up. In fact as far as I am concerned the first game in the Twinbee series Twinbee (an arcade game) alongside sega's original Fantasy Zone are the games I would say kick started the whole cute em up genre. This game Pop'n Twinbee is in fact the 6th game in the Twinbee series but in all honesty when it came out here I had no idea that it was a part of a Series maybe cause it was the first one to hit our shores and back then we didn't have the internet and the freedom of information we have now. I have fond memories of playing this when younger at a friends house but as far as I can remember I never actually owned it, in fact I don't remember ever seeing it in the wild or having the chance to grab it. I guess that's the good thing about collecting as an adult its a lot easier to earn the money to buy the games and to go through all of the trouble of finding them. People might moan when paying £20 for an old game now but remember when we were kids and these games were the in thing they were frequently more than this, there was no internet to help and so tracking a copy down could involve taking the bus all over the place or begging your mum or dad to drive you all about.

OK so the game plays pretty much like any other shoot em up you will have played you travel up the screen shooting enemies and collecting bells which you can either just grab straight away and gain points or you can shoot them. If you shoot the bells then they will change color with each color representing some kind of power up. If you learn what color means what power up then you can start trying to shoot things until they become the color you need to gain your desired upgrade. You can get a speed boost, a shield, a split shot, a satellite.

This bell-based system of power ups really gives the game a unique feel. At times the screen can be full of enemies and bullets yet you not only have to think about shooting and avoiding them but you also need to think about the bells. Should you grab the bells now or would going towards them see you shot and damaged, or can you afford to shoot them enough to turn them in to the desired color. It helps that in this game its not 1 shot and you explode, nope you actually have a life bar so maybe you can afford to take a little damage if it leads to you getting the desired power up.

You don't just have to worry about the enemies in the air at the same height as you though, in fact you have your regular shot but you also have a separate lock-on weapon which can hit enemies who are below you, then you have a bomb button which causes your ship to spew a multitude of smaller bees which cover almost the whole screen attacking. If you hold down your lock on button then you can use this to deliver a short-range punch attack, which doesn't seem all that useful to me but its still kind of cool.

The game has seven stages each with a boss at the end and you can either play alone or in two player mode. I find two player to be pretty cool as when playing with 2 players certain options are available to allow you to help each other, you can give the other player a bit of your life energy to replenish there's or even use your team mates ship as a projectile against the enemys. In the options menu you can switch between normal and couple mode. Now couple mode is something which is very interesting for a multiplayer game like this. If you select couple mode, the games enemies will primarily attack Player 1 giving Player 2 a much easier time of things. This mode is intended to allow less experienced players to still enjoy the game. This is something which I really like as it would allow you to play the game with a partner or child who is less experienced, it is something I would frankly like to see in more co-operative video games. I think it is also important to note that this game has 7 different difficulty levels which is quiet a lot by most games standards, the levels also do seem to have quiet a bit of difference. I think this is great as not only does it mean that there should be a level which suits you but it also gives the game some replayability as if you finish it on one level you can always try to finish it on a higher level (well unless you finish it on level 7 that is).

Not only is Pop'n Twinbee incredibly cute hence my referring to it as a cute em up but it also obviously has a very strong anime influence. The game has lovely color-filled backgrounds, realism maybe cast aside in favor of cuteness but detail certainly is not. The first stage sees you fly over forests, crop fields and towns. This is pretty good for a first level some games would have saved each of these types of area for a level all of there own. This game is always providing you something new to look at and its not just the stages. The enemies are also very varied ranging from normal looking ships to angry vegetables to flying attack pandas. Throw on top of this the fact that you have cute short little intermissions between levels and the game is just so delightfully cute and well Japanese.

The audio is also in my opinion so darn happy and enthusiastic it really sets the mood for this games whole personality perfectly. Add to this the fact that there are great sound effects for the the shots and explosions plus some really cute little bits of voice-acting including little pained cries when your hit and shouts of glee when you grab an item.This game is just dripping in charm and personality to the point that I simply challenge you to not smile at it, in fact if it doesn't make you smile at some point then I think you might just be dead inside.

So what would I score this game? Well I would give it 8 out of 10 and that's coming from someone who is not really that big into the whole space ship shoot em up genre. So how much are you looking to pay for it if your interested? Well the game seems to most often go for £18 to £25 for a loose pal cart but it is worth looking about as I got mine for £11 for a loose pal cart. even if your not the sort who would usually go for a shump this might well be worth a look as well its just so darn cute and happy. Also it gets a big shout out both for its large range of difficulties but also for its unique couples setting.

Yeah it is quiet shoddy If it helps I am using a singstar microphone which probably explains a lot, I will see if I can either get it to record in mono for the next one or duplicate it so it comes out of left and right, its been a long time since I have made videos so im very bad at it lol

Mecharobot golf video the written version should be up on GRcades page soon

Sonic Blast Man video

I have played with the Mic settings on both of these so hopefully there is some improvment.

Review 146 has been started in written form its Judge Dreadd, I just need to play it a little more and get a bit more free time, I am aiming for it to be up by the end of friday, but in all honesty I think picking the game and then playing enough of it is the hard part.

OK so today's game is an interesting one in that it is a game based on a film which was based on a comic. I first came in to contact with the character of Judge Dread when I was young when I was shown a copy of 2000 AD a weekly science-fiction anthology comic. I think it went a little like this. I was reading a Spiderman comic when a bigger kid went ''oh kid why you reading about a wimp like that look at this its got this guy in it called Judge Dread he is proper well cool.'' OK I don't have such a good memory so I might be making his words up a bit but they probably involved something proper 80's like references to one thing being rad and the other gay but you get the picture. I have to admit I enjoyed the comic and I have picked up the odd 2000 AD related comic since then but I am far from a hardcore fan but put simply Dredd is a law enforcement officer in the dystopian future city of Mega-City One. He is not just any law man though he is a street judge which basically means that he is a police officer a judge, jury and an executioner all rolled into one, in this world there are a bunch of Judges but basically Dredd is the meanest and toughest of them all.

Well Judge Dredd made his live action film debut in 1995 in the unsurprisingly titled Judge Dredd. In this film he was portrayed by Sylvester Stallone. When it was released the film was totally panned by critics and well by almost everyone. It did receive praise in some areas these being its its visual style, its effects, stunts and action sequences. One of the things the fans seemed to have the biggest problem with is that Dredd removes his helmet and is in fact helmet-less for the majority of the film. Apparently though despite all of the hate it grossed more than $113 million worldwide against its budget of $90 million so it at least didn't loose anyone money. In total honesty though I have to admit that I actually kind of like Judge Dredd, its not a world changing film but its a decent action film with a few laughs and its a good enough way to pass a few hours.

So what we have here then is a game which started out as a much loved cult comic became a not very well liked movie and then became a game which actually received reviews ranging from good to average back in the day. I need to admit something right now though, I might have seen the film back then but I never bothered with the game for the simple reason I just kind of decided it would probably suck and so just gave it a wide berth.

OK so lets start with the games story, well for a start if you saw the movie, well the story is pretty much the same, it follows the film very closely up until right near the end. You actually get a text crawl in the intro giving you the whole set up for the world telling you about Mega City One and the Judges and what life is like in this world. You have two levels where you basically get to be Dredd doing his regular job being an officer of the law. It is then here that you learn that Dredd has been found guilty of murder and is exiled from MegaCity One into what is called The Cursed Earth. After this its basically making your way through the cursed earth and then back to MegaCity one to prove your innocence, to get the guy who framed you and to basically kick his ass. Something critics of the movie will like is that the Dredd in this game never actually removes his helmet, your in the Dredd uniform for the entire game, what do I think about this? I actually think its kind of stupid, he gets exiled in full body armor essentially in his police uniform yeah like that would happen but yeah this probably makes some critics of the film a bit happier.

OK so now its time to talk about the gameplay. Controlling Dredd is pretty easy. You run around with a button for jumping, a button to kick, one for shooting, then you have a button to switch weapons and the last one I will mention is the arrest button. Something which doesn't seem to matter beyond points but is kind of cool given the character is not only can Dredd just waste enemies he can also sometimes arrest them. You will see enemies throw up their hands and surrender and if you approach them and press the arrest button then Dredd will cuff them and they will be floated away presumably to jail on a little platform.

One of the good things about the game is that enemies come along in all shapes and sizes, you have a variety of different looking criminals and then latter you get ABC Warbots and skinless clones, something called Judge hunters. There are a couple of boss battles, you even get to ride one of the judges bikes for a nice change of pace but things like this could have been done more often as this doesnt compare that well in the variety and keeping it fresh stakes as something like Indiana Jones's Greatest Adventures which I reviewed recently, in fact despite this games attempts at variety this game feels like it starts to drag on a bit and if you are anything like me then you will most likely begin to feel your interest just dripping away. Some of the level objectives also seem like more of a slog than anything, find this, blow so many crates up etc. You tend to find you can get a bit lost in levels and start feeling your doing a chore not playing a game, in this way the game reminds me of Spiderman and the Xmen Arcades Revenge with the bomb deactivating etcetera. The great thing about the character of Dredd is that he is an arse kicking bad ass and I just feel this game needed to be a little more straight up action, a little more Contra style. I will admit though that things get a little more fun when replaying levels as you know the layout and where to go to meet your objectives instead of feeling like your wandering lost.

OK so I just want to quickly go over the games graphics and sound. The graphics in this game look quiet good really. Nice character animation, the graphics are a little bit comic book visuals meet Flashback and in my opinion it really works. The scenery and characters are very colorful and I would say represent the source material well. Overall its not a bad game graphics wise at all. The music in this game is kind of generic action music but in honesty it has a sort of dark gritty theme to it all and it helps set the mood well, it certainly fits the charters and world and doesn't grate. The sound effects are all pretty much what you would expect, although seriously they needed to throw in a few voice samples in my opinion, having him occasionally say ''I am the Law'' perhaps when beating a boss or something would have been a nice little touch.

OK so now is the all important score part of the review, what am I going to give Dredd? Well after much deliberation I have decided that what Dredd deserves is a 6.5 out of 10. Its a reasonably enjoyable game, much better than average but there are also a heck of a lot better games on the system. I spent £8 on my cartridge only Pal copy and for me I think that price is about right, that's this games sweet spot in my opinion. If you can get it for something around that point then id heartily say give it a bash. Looking online at the moment cartridge only pal copies tend to be about £12 to £15 with fully boxed copies going for £25 to £30.